Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Away day in the rain.

It started raining on Sunday evening and it was still raining on Monday morning. In fact it rained all day yesterday and all night.

Today it was undecided as to what to do. So it rained a bit more. We do need it as the water levels are still rather low here.

My hubby has got himself a job at Subway too, so we had to go to Heraklion to sort out his health book. So off we set in the rain.

Heraklion is about an hours drive away. Some of the journey was in rain and some in sunshine. When we got to the office that we wanted we were very surprised that there was no one there, so we were in and out in 10 minutes. So that's him sorted.

I decided to take some photos of the capital to show you what it is like.

As you can see it was bumper to bumper. With double parking.

These are the old city walls.

This photo shows how these old walls were constructed. It reminds me of a patchwork quilt.

By this time it was throwing it down and it has rather spoilt the photos.

These ruins are not far from the port.

It was a shame that the rain spoilt our visit. I didn't get to go shopping or anything, it was so miserable. We just carried on home.

I do feel sorry for the holiday makers who are here this week as the weather has not been nice to them at all.

A bit of history about Heraklion.(Iraklion)

It was built in 824AD by the Arab Saracens and called Chandax

It was built where the old harbour of Knossos used to stand.

In the Byzantine period it was called Chandakas.

In the venetian period it was called Candia, even the whole island was called Candia.

The walls that we see now were built in 1462. Well that is when they started them and it took 100yrs to complete. These walls at some points are 60meters thick. There perimeter is 4.5km. and there are 12 bastions and forts all around. However these walls fell to the Turks in 1669, after a siege that had lasted 22 years. 30,000 Christians were dead and 120,000 Turks.The Turks occupied Crete until 1897.

Crete was an independent state from 1897 to 1913 and then it was reunited with Greece.

Crete seems to have had a very turbulent past and there is plenty of history and plenty of sites to go and see.